A U.S. special forces soldier accused of using classified information about the operation to remove Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro from office to make prediction market bets on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to federal charges.
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Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, was charged Friday with unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and making an unlawful monetary transaction.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett, who is presiding over the case, released him on a $250,000 personal recognizance bond and restricted his travel to New York, North Carolina and California.
Manhattan federal prosecutors allege that Van Dyke, who is stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, bet $33,034 on the Maduro raid on Polymarket, which amounted to more than $409,000 in ill-gotten gains.
On Tuesday, Van Dyke’s defense attorney, Zach Intrater, said that the soldier is on leave from the military. As of now, his status with the military is “unsettled,” Intrater said.
Since 2008, Van Dyke has been an active-duty soldier in the Army, according to the indictment. In 2023, he became a Master Sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Forces.
Van Dyke allegedly “participated in the planning and execution of the U.S. military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro,” prosecutors said. “In total, Van Dyke made approximately 13 bets from Dec. 27, 2025, through the evening of Jan. 26.”
Maduro and his wife were captured on Jan. 3 during a nighttime raid in Caracas carried out by U.S. forces.
In a post on X, Polymarket’s founder and CEO said he was “grateful” to the Department of Justice for publicly recognizing the company’s cooperation on the case.
“Noise aside, the reality is we work proactively with all relevant authorities on any suspicious activity on our marketplace. We flagged this, referred it, and cooperated throughout the process,” Polymarket’s Shayne Coplan said. “This happens constantly behind the scenes, despite what many are led to believe.”
After the government apprehended Maduro and transported him aboard the USS Iwo Jima, a photograph of Van Dyke was taken and uploaded to his Google account, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors said the image showed Van Dyke on what appeared to be the deck of a ship at sea during sunrise. In the photograph, he was wearing U.S. military fatigues and carrying a rifle with three others also wearing fatigues, according to the indictment.
The image wasn’t included in the indictment, and NBC News has not reviewed it.
“The same day of the operation, Van Dyke withdrew the majority of his allegedly unlawful proceeds from his Polymarket account,” federal prosecutors said.
Three days after the Maduro raid, on Jan. 6, Van Dyke asked Polymarket to delete his account, and falsely claimed he had lost access to the email address, authorities said.
The defendant attempted to make an account on Kalshi, a rival prediction market platform, according to a spokesperson for the company. The spokesperson said that Van Dyke failed to pass Kalshi’s user verification process, called Know Your Customer, or KYC.
Van Dyke’s next court appearance is scheduled for June.
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